Our carnivores

After lots and lots of research…I decided to go with a prepared raw diet. I first saw it on this site http://www.catnutrition.org/index.php and then here http://www.catinfo.org/ . I then saw it on many other websites which talk about feline nutrition. I chose it because it seemed easy to make, and it is! Also, my cats liked it. I was afraid LuLu would not after eating kibble her whole life, but she took to the new diet right away! I use the recipe without bones because I do not have a grinder. We looked it up and in order to grind bones, we would need a very expensive kind of grinder. If anyone is interested in this recipe, maybe we can put our resources together and buy a grinder. Also, we could get together a COOP so we can get cheap organic meat (I now buy my meat at the METRO store but I do not trust that it is fresh)

Ingredients:

1.4Kg raw muscle meat (I have used chicken drumsticks, thighs, whole chicken and turkey thighs, all with great success)

400gr raw heart (it must be from the same animal family so if you use rabbit, you need rabbit hearts but turkey and chicken are interchangeable

200gr raw liver (see above note)

2 cups water (ideally spring or filtered)

4 egg yolks (organic)

4 tablespoons bone meal

2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin

4 capsules raw glandular supplement, such as, for example, multigland supplement by Immoplex (I had to order this online)

800 IU Vitamine E (I really wish I had bought the dry type, this is messy and smelly)

200mg Vitamin B complex

1.5 teaspoons of light salt with iodine

1 tablespoon of dulse

3 teaspoons psyllium husk powder (especially while transitioning because the bone constipates at first)

1. I cut up the meat into chunks; at first the chunks were small so that the transition would not be too hard, but they are now quite big maybe the size of my thumb. This takes the longest time, especially if I use whole chickens. I actually find it therapeutic if I don’t think about the poor bird. But you can buy boneless/skinless thighs if your budget allows. I take some of the skin off (I am assuming that in nature the cat would eat the whole bird but in nature animals are less fatty than in store)

2. The livers and the hearts I grind in my Magic Bullet but I always have to add a bit of water, maybe 1/2 cup. I sometimes replace this with my fabulous homemade chicken broth.

3. All the other ingredients I mix up in a bowl (adding the psyllium husk powder and gelatin at the end since they thicken)

4. I mix the three together very well and then store. I use medium size ziplock bags in which I can fit about 220gr-250gr. This is enough for four meals.

At feeding time I thaw one bag in warm water. For 4 cats I add one tablet of taurine (this amino acid is essential to cats and it deteriorates during freezing) and one capsule salmon oil (I do not add at preparation time because I read somewhere that it gets lost in freezing) I also add warm water or, sometimes, warm homemade kitty chicken broth (I read about the chicken broth in The Natural Cat GREAT READ!)

I know this sounds very complicated but it really isn’t.

Once in a while I feed them raw bones. Small bones are best so I give them the chicken ribs and wing tips. This way I am not wasting the whole chickens I buy. I will be honest and not vegetarian when I say that the other bones I use to make broth. Please don’t hate me Robyn.